“I think it was blown over by the explosion, but it should still be operable,” Whack said.
“It might have to be cleaned and decontaminated, but hopefully it won’t be damaged or unusable,” Patrick said. “Check it out. We’ll meet at the Space Defense Force building.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Whack said, and he headed out the door.
Patrick turned to Brad. “You stay with Miss Horton, okay, Brad?”
“I want to go with you, Dad,” Brad said.
“You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Hold on a second, Patrick,” Rob Spara interjected. “We all want to go with you.”
“These guys are dangerous — they’re killers,” Patrick said. “The Tin Man and CID are our best weapons to use against them.”
“With all due respect, General — no, they’re not,” Rob said. “Those ‘guys’ are our neighbors — they may even be our friends. The best answer to this situation may not be the best weapon — maybe it’s just one neighbor telling another neighbor to knock it off and join the real world again.”
“We’ll get the whole squadron,” John de Carteret said. “I don’t know how many guys we’re up against, but we should be able to muster a bunch of guys to head on out there with you.”
Patrick thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll meet out at the Space Defense Force building,” he said, “and we’ll come up with a plan.” He turned to Brad. He was about to tell him he couldn’t go. But he looked into his son’s face, and he didn’t see his son — he saw the look of a determined, angry young man, ready to go to work, resolved not to stay behind.
He clasped Brad on the shoulder and nodded. “You’re with me, Brad,” he said.
“The closing of the air base is only the beginning,” Judah Andorsen proclaimed loudly to the three hundred men, women, and even children assembled before him in the massive hollowed-out cavern carved into the side of the open-pit mine. Standing beside and behind him was Michael Fitzgerald. “That base was a symbol of the waste, inefficiency, and incompetence of the American government. They failed to protect themselves, and they failed to protect the citizens that trusted the government to help them. Those people from the Knights of the True Republic lost their lives because the government promised to help them, and broke their promise. Government is incapable of protecting you. Only we the people can protect us. No one else but ourselves.” The audience clapped and cheered their agreement.
“When the base reverts back to its rightful owners…”—and the audience chanted,
At the mine entrance, two pickup trucks with four men, all armed with hunting rifles fitted with night-vision sniperscopes, stood guard just inside the closed steel gate and cattle guard. The pickup trucks were arranged nose to nose, blocking the road but making it easy for them to maneuver in case they were needed.
“Pretty good turnout tonight, eh?” one of the guards said. “I brought my brother-in-law and his teenage kids. They got to meet Mr. Andorsen personally.”
“We might need a bigger cavern pretty soon,” another said.
“Soon we’ll move out to the air base,” another guard said. “I heard that after it’s cleaned up, we’ll use—” He stopped, then started scanning the area outside the gate with his night-vision sniperscope. “Did you hear something?”
“What? Like a car?”
“No — sounded big, running, like an elk or something.” He stopped, then reversed his scan. “Hold on… I see…
Moments later, the Cybernetic Infantry Device ran up to the gate. “Evening, guys,” Brad McLanahan said in an electronically synthesized voice from within the CID. “Nice night tonight, isn’t it?” Brad shook the heavy steel gate experimentally a few times… then lifted it up, snapping chains, locks, and hinges, and tossed it aside as easily as tossing a shoveful of dirt.
